Former Community – We Moved

🆕 Coached community here, for posts & feedback public community here.

ForumResources: Researches, Studies, TheoriesWhy books don't work

Please or Register to create posts and topics.

Why books don't work

#1 · May 31, 2022, 1:48 am

Quote from leaderoffun on May 31, 2022, 1:48 am
This is a fantastic post: "Why books donʼt work | Andy Matuschak" (https://andymatuschak.org/books/). What follows are my highlights as a way to save you some reading (not a very successful summary, but it's faster than nothing).
* We are often proud because we read a lot; but when someone asks a basic probing question, the edifice instantly collapses. Sometimes it’s a memory issue: I simply can’t recall the relevant details
* Books don’t work for the same reason that lectures don’t work: neither medium has any explicit theory of how people actually learn things, and as a result, both mediums accidentally (and mostly invisibly) evolved around a theory that’s plainly false.
* “the lecturer says words describing an idea; the class hears the words and maybe scribbles in a notebook; then the class understands the idea.” In learning sciences, we call this model “[transmissionism](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/transmissionism).
* some people __do__ absorb knowledge from books. Indeed, those are the people who really do think about what they’re reading. The process is often invisible. These readers’ inner monologues have sounds like: “This idea reminds me of…,” “This point conflicts with…,” “I don’t really understand how…,” etc.
* Readers must understand their own cognition
* it’s challenging to learn these types of skills, and that many adults lack them
* great authors earnestly want readers to think carefully about their words. These authors form sophisticated pictures of their readers’ evolving conceptions. They anticipate confusions readers might have, then shape their prose to acknowledge and mitigate those issues
* But metacognition is an inherently dynamic process, evolving continuously as readers’ own conceptions evolve. Books are static
* f the model is that people understand written ideas by thinking carefully about them, what would books look like if they were built around helping people do that?
* Unlike most non-fiction books, textbooks usually __are__ built around explicit cognitive models
* I’ll now make the case that textbooks don’t effectively implement their own models about how people learn—and that even if they did, textbooks’ models neglect important ideas about how people learn.
* textbooks are mostly purchased for course syllabi, not for self-study.
* Readers must decide which exercises to do and when. Readers must run their own feedback loops: did they clearly understand the ideas involved in the exercise? If not, what should they do next?
* By contrast, courses handle much of this metacognitive burden
* Certainly, courses do none of this perfectly. Plenty of students still absorb nothing from a class. But by shouldering some of the metacognition, courses preserve more of students’ attention for the material itself.
* Courses can provide a personal relationship with a disciplinary expert, a rich conduit for accessing the discipline’s culture—much of which may be tacit
* For many students, courses offer a helpful accountability structure, playing an important role in supporting their willpower.
* Courses also offer emotional salience, which motivates and amplifies learning: live lectures might be inefficient, but an instructor’s palpable fascination can leave a lasting impression
* I propose: we don’t necessarily have to make books work. __We can make new forms instead.__ This doesn’t have to mean abandoning narrative prose; it doesn’t even necessarily mean abandoning paper—rather, we can free our thinking by abandoning our preconceptions of what a book is. Maybe once we’ve done all this, we’ll have arrived at something which does indeed look much like a book.
* [people struggle to absorb new material when their working memory is already overloaded](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4207727/). More concretely: if you’ve just been introduced to a zoo of new terms, you probably won’t absorb much from a sentence which uses many of those terms at once.
* spaced repetition. By re-testing yourself on material you’ve learned over expanding intervals, you can cheaply and reliably commit huge volumes of information to long-term memory
* But reading this “book” doesn’t look like reading any other book. The explanatory text is tightly woven with brief interactive review sessions, meant to exploit the ideas we just introduced

This is a fantastic post: "Why books donʼt work | Andy Matuschak" (https://andymatuschak.org/books/). What follows are my highlights as a way to save you some reading (not a very successful summary, but it's faster than nothing).

* We are often proud because we read a lot; but when someone asks a basic probing question, the edifice instantly collapses. Sometimes it’s a memory issue: I simply can’t recall the relevant details
* Books don’t work for the same reason that lectures don’t work: neither medium has any explicit theory of how people actually learn things, and as a result, both mediums accidentally (and mostly invisibly) evolved around a theory that’s plainly false.
* “the lecturer says words describing an idea; the class hears the words and maybe scribbles in a notebook; then the class understands the idea.” In learning sciences, we call this model “[transmissionism](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/transmissionism).
* some people __do__ absorb knowledge from books. Indeed, those are the people who really do think about what they’re reading. The process is often invisible. These readers’ inner monologues have sounds like: “This idea reminds me of…,” “This point conflicts with…,” “I don’t really understand how…,” etc.
* Readers must understand their own cognition
* it’s challenging to learn these types of skills, and that many adults lack them
* great authors earnestly want readers to think carefully about their words. These authors form sophisticated pictures of their readers’ evolving conceptions. They anticipate confusions readers might have, then shape their prose to acknowledge and mitigate those issues
* But metacognition is an inherently dynamic process, evolving continuously as readers’ own conceptions evolve. Books are static
* f the model is that people understand written ideas by thinking carefully about them, what would books look like if they were built around helping people do that?
* Unlike most non-fiction books, textbooks usually __are__ built around explicit cognitive models
* I’ll now make the case that textbooks don’t effectively implement their own models about how people learn—and that even if they did, textbooks’ models neglect important ideas about how people learn.
* textbooks are mostly purchased for course syllabi, not for self-study.
* Readers must decide which exercises to do and when. Readers must run their own feedback loops: did they clearly understand the ideas involved in the exercise? If not, what should they do next?
* By contrast, courses handle much of this metacognitive burden
* Certainly, courses do none of this perfectly. Plenty of students still absorb nothing from a class. But by shouldering some of the metacognition, courses preserve more of students’ attention for the material itself.
* Courses can provide a personal relationship with a disciplinary expert, a rich conduit for accessing the discipline’s culture—much of which may be tacit
* For many students, courses offer a helpful accountability structure, playing an important role in supporting their willpower.
* Courses also offer emotional salience, which motivates and amplifies learning: live lectures might be inefficient, but an instructor’s palpable fascination can leave a lasting impression
* I propose: we don’t necessarily have to make books work. __We can make new forms instead.__ This doesn’t have to mean abandoning narrative prose; it doesn’t even necessarily mean abandoning paper—rather, we can free our thinking by abandoning our preconceptions of what a book is. Maybe once we’ve done all this, we’ll have arrived at something which does indeed look much like a book.
* [people struggle to absorb new material when their working memory is already overloaded](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4207727/). More concretely: if you’ve just been introduced to a zoo of new terms, you probably won’t absorb much from a sentence which uses many of those terms at once.
* spaced repetition. By re-testing yourself on material you’ve learned over expanding intervals, you can cheaply and reliably commit huge volumes of information to long-term memory
* But reading this “book” doesn’t look like reading any other book. The explanatory text is tightly woven with brief interactive review sessions, meant to exploit the ideas we just introduced

Lucio Buffalmano has reacted to this post.

#2 · May 31, 2022, 3:32 am

Yep, totally agree on this.

I'd also add that books, for most and in many situations are, in good part, a pasttime.

It's 30% learning something, and 70% passing time.
Plus, for some, signaling and self-signaling how cultivated and "self-development oriented" they are.

Another important aspects why they're not the best tools for learning is this:

Few books are written to share either great wisdom, or great overviews around any certain topic.

Many books are padded to excess, and many are published for the author's benefit.

Quoting you from another thread:

Quote from leaderoffun on May 31, 2022, 1:26 am
Not much I found in books and blog posts. There's one 'online personality' that seems to like manifestos: Seth Godin.
He speaks in a very abstract way and rarely do you get actionable advice. His books are... hmm a bit heavy on platitude and repetition.

Couldn't agree more.

Seth Godin is Mr. Padder for excellence.
Anything I've read from him could have been summarized in 20% of the space, without losing any real information.

Edit:
There are important exceptions.
However, it's more often niche-books rather than best-selling ones.
Best-selling books are written to sell rather than transfer information, wisdom, and facilitate personal development.

leaderoffun and Luli92 have reacted to this post.

Community, new content and Confidence University now available here.

#3 · May 31, 2022, 8:38 am

Quote from leaderoffun on May 31, 2022, 8:38 am
What I add: it's getting worse. Attention spans shorter, reasoning abilities nullified by echo chambers, algorithms and 'distraction economy.'
Those who read books at least are trying to have some kind of clear thinking. Books are wonderful in that they take several rounds of editing, and this should catch some sloppy thinking. It's definitely a security layer over just unedited opinion posts (made for the outrage milk cow that are social networks)... or social networks themselves. Twitter basically forces you to remove any nuance or context, and condense what you want to say in the most rage-inducing, opinionated caricature of what you believe... Taking your beliefs as ground truth (ugh! Talk about soldier mindset --Julia Galef--!)
Your beliefs, unchecked, have been biased by other people's beliefs shouted from the rooftops of twitter/opinion posts. And are probably very suspect! Who actually checks their beliefs against any kind of reference? Nobody!
This is to me the most damaging part of social media/the web we have: a popularity contest that produces shit thinking.
Not to mention that clear thinking, or thinking of any kind, is not even a goal for most people.
We have what we have I guess.

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on May 31, 2022, 3:32 am
Seth Godin is Mr. Padder for excellence.
Anything I've read from him could have been summarized in 20% of the space, without losing any real information.
It took a freaking speleology mission to get the one sentence I find so useful to write manifestos: "People like us do thinks like these." This is really valuable, but it shouldn't have taken this long.
Best-selling books are written to sell rather than transfer information, wisdom, and facilitate personal development.
Agreed. There's a subset that I want to call 'useful books.' The question is how to find them. Anyone has any ideas? Any whatsoever! Having a few rules of thumb here has tremendous leverage.
I suspect it has to do with whether the author has a mental model of how people will learn what he has to say. In other words: whether he's good at teaching. And whether he understands that attention is extremely scarce.
An example of a book that could be an 'useful book' but fails: Julia Galef's Scout Mindset. She's a TED talk star, and communicates well on video. On book format, she sounds... hollow, politically correct, and ineffective. It could be one book to recommend to anyone striving to practice clear thinking... which should be everyone on earth. But she manages to write a book that doesn't help the reader in any way. It's a slog to get to the end. And it barely gives you anything actionable.

What I add: it's getting worse. Attention spans shorter, reasoning abilities nullified by echo chambers, algorithms and 'distraction economy.'

Those who read books at least are trying to have some kind of clear thinking. Books are wonderful in that they take several rounds of editing, and this should catch some sloppy thinking. It's definitely a security layer over just unedited opinion posts (made for the outrage milk cow that are social networks)... or social networks themselves. Twitter basically forces you to remove any nuance or context, and condense what you want to say in the most rage-inducing, opinionated caricature of what you believe... Taking your beliefs as ground truth (ugh! Talk about soldier mindset --Julia Galef--!)

Your beliefs, unchecked, have been biased by other people's beliefs shouted from the rooftops of twitter/opinion posts. And are probably very suspect! Who actually checks their beliefs against any kind of reference? Nobody!

This is to me the most damaging part of social media/the web we have: a popularity contest that produces shit thinking.

Not to mention that clear thinking, or thinking of any kind, is not even a goal for most people.

We have what we have I guess.

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on May 31, 2022, 3:32 am
Seth Godin is Mr. Padder for excellence.
Anything I've read from him could have been summarized in 20% of the space, without losing any real information.

It took a freaking speleology mission to get the one sentence I find so useful to write manifestos: "People like us do thinks like these." This is really valuable, but it shouldn't have taken this long.

Best-selling books are written to sell rather than transfer information, wisdom, and facilitate personal development.

Agreed. There's a subset that I want to call 'useful books.' The question is how to find them. Anyone has any ideas? Any whatsoever! Having a few rules of thumb here has tremendous leverage.

I suspect it has to do with whether the author has a mental model of how people will learn what he has to say. In other words: whether he's good at teaching. And whether he understands that attention is extremely scarce.

An example of a book that could be an 'useful book' but fails: Julia Galef's Scout Mindset. She's a TED talk star, and communicates well on video. On book format, she sounds... hollow, politically correct, and ineffective. It could be one book to recommend to anyone striving to practice clear thinking... which should be everyone on earth. But she manages to write a book that doesn't help the reader in any way. It's a slog to get to the end. And it barely gives you anything actionable.

#4 · May 31, 2022, 9:26 am

Quote from leaderoffun on May 31, 2022, 8:38 am
The question is how to find them. Anyone has any ideas? Any whatsoever! Having a few rules of thumb here has tremendous leverage.
I suspect it has to do with whether the author has a mental model of how people will learn what he has to say. In other words: whether he's good at teaching. And whether he understands that attention is extremely scarce.
An example of a book that could be an 'useful book' but fails: Julia Galef's Scout Mindset. She's a TED talk star, and communicates well on video. On book format, she sounds... hollow, politically correct, and ineffective. It could be one book to recommend to anyone striving to practice clear thinking... which should be everyone on earth. But she manages to write a book that doesn't help the reader in any way. It's a slog to get to the end. And it barely gives you anything actionable.

My main tool is:

Look at the author.

Some rules of thumb:

If it's a motivational speaker, there is a very high chance that it's either a fluff-job, or that it repeats the same things you've heard many times already
If it's a marketer, very high chances of being a fluff-job + upsells
If it's the latest guy doing the rounds on the podcasts, he likely will repeat what he says in the videos, but with the added padding (possibly from the ghost writer he hired while he cranks up the marketing)
If it's someone who promotes one single way -"his" way- to succeed at anything that is complex, skip it (ie.: "be a masculine alpha male" for dating, / "do paleo / intermittent fasting" for nutrition / "be assertive" for interpersonal social success, etc. etc.

If it's a researcher or scientist, or someone at the forefront of a certain discipline, then it might be good.

leaderoffun has reacted to this post.

Community, new content and Confidence University now available here.

#5 · May 31, 2022, 5:08 pm

Good stuff!

Where would you put MJ DeMarco?

That's a 'guy who has done <complex thing> (ideally more than once) and who cares enough so that others benefit from it so he will write it up'

Naval Ravikant is there too; but taking the philosopher high road.

Funny thing, for MJ DeMarco, he has a pubic forum too and he even posts on it (rare for the species that you list). It doesn't help that the crowd he attracts has the 'marketing brain damage' syndrome and spend time trying to promote crap to each other lol (like the warriors forum)

DeMarco's books are high on shock/motivational value, but ultimately not very actionable. Same with Tim Ferris (although he does believe he has a repeatable system that is actionable; it's just fiction though).

Ferris is a subspecies of the marketer. It doesn't upsell you to anything. But he's mostly lying (or rather bullshitting), and his species is perhaps identifiable as 'self promoter who doesn't know what the upsell is, yet'

Lucio Buffalmano has reacted to this post.

#6 · May 31, 2022, 6:05 pm

Quote from Anon on May 31, 2022, 6:05 pm
Very interesting topic to think about. My opinion:
Books are a medium that has some strengths and some weaknesses, independent of how good the content is.
(I now assume excellent content and presentation. If those are not the case, the book is close to useless.
However that is also the case for any other medium).
There are definitely topics that are well fitted into a book (e.g. complex high-level concepts and ideas), while others are not (e.g. practical things that we learn best when seeing them applied).
Medium Book - Strengths
- Gives a good overview and breaks a big topic effectively into subtopics that one can individually access fast
- Can cover a whole topic completely in both breadth and depth at the same time
- Acts as a topic-complete knowledge-safe:
Condenses the most important concepts and insights about one topic and makes them immedialtly (offline) accessible at any time we want.
- It gives us a physical representation of the structure and different aspects of a topic (that a virtual thing like a video can not do in the same way)
Medium Book - Weaknesses
- Not particularly interactive.
Counter: One can make them more interactive by actually going through the exercises that are often included and by trying to summarize important concepts or marking important passages.
- Not particularly stimulating - especially in comparison to the highly edited, flashy, densely stuffed, fast cutting and overwhelming videos that are so common today.
Counter: Trying to not get accustomed to these types of videos as they probably can completely destroy our attention span to the point we are bored already from merely opening a book (and not getting 5 memes thrown at us the same second).
- Printed Books:
Can not really be changed after being printed out. Makes it less applicable for topics that change quickly, and topics that one hasn't completely grasped in it's entirety.
How to find good Books
Agreed. There's a subset that I want to call 'useful books.' The question is how to find them. Anyone has any ideas? Any whatsoever! Having a few rules of thumb here has tremendous leverage.
I suspect it has to do with whether the author has a mental model of how people will learn what he has to say. In other words: whether he's good at teaching. And whether he understands that attention is extremely scarce.
Very important question I think.
The typical approach for me is to go to Amazon and search for the topic I'm interested and ...
- get an idea of how many options there are
- look for books that are not extremely popular and especially not too "mainstream" and flashy in their appearance/marketing (there is a high correlation of them being full of fluff and/or bland as Lucio points out)
- look at the preview to get an impression of the writing style of the author
=> This is the most important aspect, because everything else is meaningless if I don't like the style or content-selection of the author
- what the book reviews say, especially the 3-star and below ones
=> The second most important aspect. Is there something crucial missing or presented badly?
If you invest some time you should get a good overview about what the options are for the topic you are interested in, and you could either try several books that seem the best overall and settle for one or two, or decide upfront.
Other Approaches
- I usually like to ask people what the most important books were that they have read in their life, so recommendations are another idea
- Often I simply happen to stumble upon great content and if the author also has a book, or recommends one, it might be good as well.
Common Biases when looking for good content
- The presentation/delivery ("This is just a series of blog posts, I should buy a book about the topic and read that instead")
- The price tag ("A free eBook? How could that possibly be more valuable than a $60 paper book?")
- The page count ("Only 180 pages? How could that be more bang for the buck than the 500 page book half the price over there?")
Of course these aren't completely unreasonable concerns, but these patterns still need to be observed in our mind because there are a lots of exceptions.
Good free book to learn from
An example of a completely free eBook that is methodically well made (short, no fluff and easy to read and quite applicable) is "Getting Real" from the creators of Basecamp.
It doesn't even contain pictures, just text, but it's hard to put away (at least for me).
If I write a book I'll try to get the overall writing style in that direction.

Very interesting topic to think about. My opinion:

Books are a medium that has some strengths and some weaknesses, independent of how good the content is.

(I now assume excellent content and presentation. If those are not the case, the book is close to useless.
However that is also the case for any other medium).

There are definitely topics that are well fitted into a book (e.g. complex high-level concepts and ideas), while others are not (e.g. practical things that we learn best when seeing them applied).

Medium Book - Strengths

- Gives a good overview and breaks a big topic effectively into subtopics that one can individually access fast

- Can cover a whole topic completely in both breadth and depth at the same time

- Acts as a topic-complete knowledge-safe:
Condenses the most important concepts and insights about one topic and makes them immedialtly (offline) accessible at any time we want.

- It gives us a physical representation of the structure and different aspects of a topic (that a virtual thing like a video can not do in the same way)

Medium Book - Weaknesses

- Not particularly interactive.

Counter: One can make them more interactive by actually going through the exercises that are often included and by trying to summarize important concepts or marking important passages.

- Not particularly stimulating - especially in comparison to the highly edited, flashy, densely stuffed, fast cutting and overwhelming videos that are so common today.

Counter: Trying to not get accustomed to these types of videos as they probably can completely destroy our attention span to the point we are bored already from merely opening a book (and not getting 5 memes thrown at us the same second).

- Printed Books:
Can not really be changed after being printed out. Makes it less applicable for topics that change quickly, and topics that one hasn't completely grasped in it's entirety.

How to find good Books

Agreed. There's a subset that I want to call 'useful books.' The question is how to find them. Anyone has any ideas? Any whatsoever! Having a few rules of thumb here has tremendous leverage.
I suspect it has to do with whether the author has a mental model of how people will learn what he has to say. In other words: whether he's good at teaching. And whether he understands that attention is extremely scarce.

Very important question I think.

The typical approach for me is to go to Amazon and search for the topic I'm interested and ...

- get an idea of how many options there are

- look for books that are not extremely popular and especially not too "mainstream" and flashy in their appearance/marketing (there is a high correlation of them being full of fluff and/or bland as Lucio points out)

- look at the preview to get an impression of the writing style of the author
=> This is the most important aspect, because everything else is meaningless if I don't like the style or content-selection of the author

- what the book reviews say, especially the 3-star and below ones
=> The second most important aspect. Is there something crucial missing or presented badly?

If you invest some time you should get a good overview about what the options are for the topic you are interested in, and you could either try several books that seem the best overall and settle for one or two, or decide upfront.

Other Approaches

- I usually like to ask people what the most important books were that they have read in their life, so recommendations are another idea

- Often I simply happen to stumble upon great content and if the author also has a book, or recommends one, it might be good as well.

Common Biases when looking for good content

- The presentation/delivery ("This is just a series of blog posts, I should buy a book about the topic and read that instead")

- The price tag ("A free eBook? How could that possibly be more valuable than a $60 paper book?")

- The page count ("Only 180 pages? How could that be more bang for the buck than the 500 page book half the price over there?")

Of course these aren't completely unreasonable concerns, but these patterns still need to be observed in our mind because there are a lots of exceptions.

Good free book to learn from

An example of a completely free eBook that is methodically well made (short, no fluff and easy to read and quite applicable) is "Getting Real" from the creators of Basecamp.
It doesn't even contain pictures, just text, but it's hard to put away (at least for me).
If I write a book I'll try to get the overall writing style in that direction.

Lucio Buffalmano, John Freeman and 3 other users have reacted to this post.

#7 · May 31, 2022, 8:35 pm

Amazing post Anon, will read and reply more carefully when back home.

One more idea: when you read a book, you give the author permission to influence you

Lucio Buffalmano has reacted to this post.

#8 · June 1, 2022, 9:29 am

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on June 1, 2022, 9:29 am
Quote from Anon on May 31, 2022, 6:05 pm
Very interesting topic to think about. My opinion:
Books are a medium that has some strengths and some weaknesses, independent of how good the content is.
Great points, Anon!
A much more neutral and less biased overview than what I wrote earlier (I get triggered easily around the topic "books" :D).

The "Guy Who's Done It" Rule of Thumb

Quote from leaderoffun on May 31, 2022, 5:08 pm
Where would you put MJ DeMarco?
That's a 'guy who has done <complex thing> (ideally more than once) and who cares enough so that others benefit from it so he will write it up'

Love the guy.

For the "guy who has done it" rule of thumb, it's a good rule of thumb, but not enough.
It comes with important caveats.
For example:

Personal advantage bias: Berlusconi & Mick Jagger "have done" it plenty of times to have sex with attractive young women easily well past their 70s. But are they good teachers for most other guys who are not in their vantage position? Probably not
Downhill bias: for several endeavors, each success after the 1st one gets exponentially easier. Entrepreneurship, for example. Once Elon Musk was a famous multi-millionaire he had a far easier time attracting cheap funding and top talent
Edit: so in that sense the "guy who's never done it" but researched and collected data on what makes people successful the first time is probably a far better teacher than, say, the guy who's now running downhill

... And a few more exceptions that render the "guy who has done" rule a contextual rule of thumb, rather than an iron one.

John Freeman and leaderoffun have reacted to this post.

Community, new content and Confidence University now available here.

#9 · June 2, 2022, 11:58 am

Quote from Anon on May 31, 2022, 6:05 pm

Good free book to learn from
An example of a completely free eBook that is methodically well made (short, no fluff and easy to read and quite applicable) is "Getting Real" from the creators of Basecamp.
It doesn't even contain pictures, just text, but it's hard to put away (at least for me).
If I write a book I'll try to get the overall writing style in that direction.

One important thing before taking Jason Fried (author of that book) as a model: his company imploded when he decided to ban political talk from the company's chat. Many high profile employees left the company because of that, it was in tech news. A superb example of what not to do. Tech people are very sensitive to that kind of censoring because well, most bigTech platforms are doing it.

In a way, Jason Fried made a big mistake 'reading the room', misused his power, and could be a great case for TPM analysis.

Lucio Buffalmano has reacted to this post.

#10 · June 2, 2022, 3:53 pm

Quote from leaderoffun on June 2, 2022, 11:58 am
One important thing before taking Jason Fried (author of that book) as a model: his company imploded when he decided to ban political talk from the company's chat. Many high profile employees left the company because of that, it was in tech news. A superb example of what not to do. Tech people are very sensitive to that kind of censoring because well, most bigTech platforms are doing it.
In a way, Jason Fried made a big mistake 'reading the room', misused his power, and could be a great case for TPM analysis.

I despise companies and individuals that abuse their power to censor people to shove a certain agenda down peoples throats.

But I think this case is not easy to judge, because from a productivity standpoint, banning all political talk at work (not just any one side of it as it's commonly done, but truly and equally all) might be a good and valid idea actually.

No politics, no virtue signalling, no victim olympics, no hate of certain groups based on political opinions, just equality and a focus on work. Sounds like a good premise for peaceful workplace to me.

But that is a whole 'nother discussion, and feel free to disagree.

When I found the book, it struck me as a great example of how you can effectively communicate ideas through the medium book, even without relying on pictures, and I still think one can learn a lot from it, independently of the actions of one of the authors.

Edit: I actually remember this case, and I think it's not as obvious as I first thought it was.

Lucio Buffalmano has reacted to this post.